Oyster, National Rail, TfL rail - independent view of fare structures

[whole diary]

[grahame]

http://www.oyster-rail.org.uk

January 2nd 2010 was the day that Oyster^▸ (Smartcard system used by passengers on Transport for London services) became accepted on almost all National Rail services in Greater London, making cashless pay-as-you-go a reality London-wide.  It should now be really simple, but in reality it is about as complicated as it could possibly be. There are three different fares structures depending on whether your route accepted Oyster before November 2009 or not, and if not whether your journey mixes National Rail and TfL^» (Transport for London - about) rail and includes zone 1; while children sometimes travel free and sometimes have to pay.

This site has been set up to try and explain how the system works in an alternative fashion to the official TfL site.  It also exposes the alternative approach that families can take where Oyster is not the cheapest option. Plus I will highlight areas where the system is not working and list improvements that I feel need to be made.

Also a video which describes some of the anomalies ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_sbZ6kQHuiA

[JayMac]

A site I've long used. Run by a regular contributor to RailUK Forums.

He knows his stuff.

[Brucey]

A site I've long used. Run by a regular contributor to RailUK Forums.

He knows his stuff.

I concur.

The owner (Mike) helped me out when Oyster^▸ (Smartcard system used by passengers on Transport for London services) muddled up multiple journeys on the same day.  Neither my local station or the Oyster helpline were able to compehend what journeys I had actually made (despite touching in and out correctly, plus all the pink validators at interchange stations) or why I was charged as I was.

Mike explained this was due to an emergency OSI (out of station interchange) which linked three journeys into one.  But as the maximum time limit expired several times through this one long journey, I ended up being charged four incomplete journey maximum fares (around 4x^7, instead of 3x^1 fare for the actual journeys made).

My understanding is that fare calculation is much better on contactless cards as journeys are processed in the back office, where there is no time constraint on computing what the correct fare should be.  As it stands with Oyster cards, the barrier calculates your fare on the touch.  A full calculation would potentially cause congestion at the gateline.  I'm told Oyster will also be switching to the back office processing at some point, but not sure when this will start.